


Immutability

by Mhalachai



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-05
Updated: 2011-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once part of the team, always part of the team. That's what Spencer told himself as he walked up the stairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immutability

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Off-screen character death; plot slight-of-hand  
> Spoilers: Episode 5.09, "100". Set in the slight future.

  
Jason Gideon was in the hallway when Spencer returned.

The shock of the unexpected sight sent Spencer skittering back, heart in his throat, and he nearly dropped his dry-cleaning on the hall floor. Gideon said nothing, just watched as Spencer pulled himself together for long enough to open his door with a shaking hand.

Then Gideon spoke. "You look good."

The utter banality of that comment, on _this_ day of all days, sent Spencer's emotions spiraling from surprise down to something too close to anger to allow him to speak.

The lock finally gave under his key. Spencer went through the door, letting it swing shut behind him. He wasn't surprised when Gideon followed him in. As Spencer went to put his dry-cleaning on the counter, Gideon stood in the middle of the apartment, taking up less space than Spencer remembered. Before Jason Gideon left the FBI, Spencer was secretly convinced the man was the center of a time-space paradox; always taking up a larger physical space than a man of his mass and height was supposed to, his presence lingering long after he was gone.

No longer.

"You painted."

Spencer stopped ripping open the plastic encasing his best dark suit. "Derek painted, I watched," he snapped, the familiar anger at Gideon bubbling back to the surface. Only this time, it was mixed with grief; thick, choking grief that Spencer had been wading through for days. He pushed the emotion back, swallowing it down and promising to deal with it _later_. "You never used to break out with mundane exposition."

Gideon shrugged, his eyes never leaving Spencer's face. "Things change. Three years is a long time and..." His voice trailed off and he came as close to smiling as Spencer thought possible. "Everything is different now."

Spencer had to turn his head, close his eyes as another wave of grief pulsed in black waves at his vision. But he didn't have _time_ for this. He had a funeral to attend, a tedious reception to survive, teammates to console and assure, and only when this day had ended would Spencer Reid be allowed to return to his house, turn off the lights, and let himself fall apart.

"Everything is different now," Gideon said again, but the meaning of his words had slightly changed. Spencer never understood how he did that: Say one thing and have it mean something so... other. "Isn't it?"

This was a classic Gideon interrogation technique that Spencer knew all too well: Invite the unsub to start talking about something innocuous, and soon he'd be telling you everything you want to know. Gideon had perfected the technique.

That didn't mean it wasn't as effective as a brick to the chest.

"Everything's always different," Spencer said, grabbing his suit trousers and going into the bedroom to retrieve his best shirt. On any other day of his life, he'd stand still and face Gideon down, but today was not a normal day. He had a funeral to attend, a tedious reception to survive, teammates to console and assure. "Did you know JJ had a baby? A little boy named Henry."

A smile ghosted over Gideon's face. "Good," was all he said, but in that one word, Spencer heard a conversation.

Even after all these years, Spencer craved praise from this man, and he cringed as his brain responded to the stimulus, encouraging him to go on. "Dave Rossi's back on the team." Surely Gideon knew that, but what else could Spencer say?

"I heard," Gideon said. "He's very good at what he does."

Gideon's tone was so neutral that Spencer very nearly burst out with a laugh. In that one line, he'd learned more about Gideon and Rossi than in three years of working with Rossi. "You worked together in the early days of the BAU, didn't you?" Spencer asked, more to goad something out of Gideon.

"We did," Gideon said shortly. Then he stopped, looked out the window, and drew an unnecessary breath. "Past differences of opinions, that's all."

"He came back to the FBI voluntarily," Spencer prodded.

Gideon's gaze swung back, unblinking. "He left something undone."

"And you didn't," Spencer finished. All the words he wanted to say choked in his throat, threatening to crush him under the weight of what he'd lost. In the end, he turned into his bedroom to dress.

When he wandered back into the living room a few minutes later, Gideon was still there, as if he had all the time in the world. Maybe he did.

Spencer walked around the man to retrieve his suit jacket, pulling it over his shoulders and having to tug to settle it. It didn't fit as well as it once had, the day he'd pulled it off the sale rack in the low-end department store. Years before. A lifetime ago. Back when Spencer was a different man.

"You've gained, what, ten pounds?" Gideon's voice fell into the room like a breaking glass, and Spencer had to fight the urge to turn on all the lights to banish whatever spirits lurked.

"You sound like my mother," Spencer muttered, going to the mirror. He stared at the reflection of a thin, pale man with dark circles under his eyes. A man he hadn't grown used to seeing, even after all these years.

Gideon appeared by Spencer's arm. "You put on some muscle, you're eating, you're sleeping," Gideon summarized. "Not always a sure thing with the things you see every day."

Spencer passed a hand over his eyes. "Stop sounding like you care."

"I do care. Because I left, doesn't mean I didn't care."

"I know!" Spencer exclaimed, pushing away from the wall. He paced around the sparsely furnished room, suddenly unable to stand still. "I know why you left, I got the letter, I know all those things."

"I didn't leave because of anything you did."

Spencer stopped by his desk, his hand going out to pick up the worn letter Gideon had written him those long years before, explaining why he had to leave his life behind. Spencer had read that letter often in the past two days. "I know that," Spencer said. Deliberately, he looked Gideon in the face, and even that was close to impossible. "I'm not twelve, and you're not my father."

"But you are my friend," Gideon pointed out. "I wanted to say goodbye."

Spencer's fingers smoothed out the creases in the folded letter, then carefully slipped it into his inner suit pocket. "Why didn't you come to Haley's funeral?"

A long silence held in the apartment. Finally, Gideon responded. "I wish I could say it was for any other reason, but the fact is I simply didn't know until it was too late." He wasn't talking about the funeral.

"Why didn't you know?" Spencer demanded, knowing he was being unreasonable. Gideon had likely built a new life that didn't involve checking in on his old team at every turn. "If you'd been there, helped us catch Foyet, then Haley wouldn't be dead and Hotch wouldn't--"

Spencer's voice caught in his throat. He had a sudden realization that he wasn't really asking Gideon anything. He was asking himself the same question. Why hadn't Spencer been faster, been smarter, been _enough_ to help Hotchner stop Foyet before Haley had been murdered and the Hotchner family destroyed?

What help had Spencer ever been to anyone when they needed him?

Intellectually, Spencer knew that was only grief-induced nonsense. He's been with the BAU for years, was part of a team with the highest solve rate in FBI history. He was a valuable part of a team that worked to stop the worst monsters in history.

Spencer sank onto the room's lone chair, telling himself he would not cry. He had a funeral to attend, a tedious reception to survive, teammates to console and assure. He couldn't fall apart now.

"What are you thinking?" Gideon asked. If pressed, Spencer could have detailed the twenty-four times Gideon had asked that very same question, over the long years of their acquaintance.

But this would be the last time Spencer would ever hear that question, and so he answered. "Why do we do this?" Spencer's hands traced the air, bringing together all the pain and violence they saw on a weekly basis. "It never ends. None of it."

"You don't get on that plane because of the lives already lost," Gideon told him quietly. "You get up every morning and go out into the field because of the lives you can save. The hard part to understand is that in the majority of times, you're called into cases where nothing could have prevented that first act of violence."

Spencer stared at his hands, at long fingers with short nails. He'd killed two men with these hands, fired a bullet into murderous men. Didn't that make him the same as them, in some ways that mattered?

"What else would you do?" Gideon asked.

"Good question," Spencer muttered. "You knew this would happen, didn't you?"

"That what would happen?"

"That once I got so far into the BAU, I'd never be able to get out."

"Why do you say that?"

Spencer shook off his malaise. He picked up his pocket watch and slipped it into his waistcoat. He knew without looking that Derek would be there soon to drive him to the cemetery. Then he had a tedious reception to survive, teammates to console and assure, and only then could Spencer Reid return to his house, turn off the lights, and let himself fall apart.

"FBI agents are usually rotated into new units every few years," Spencer said. "You walked me directly into the BAU nearly eight years ago. At this rate the only way I'm getting out is to walk away from the FBI." Like you, Spencer thought. And we know how that ended.

"Do you want to walk away?" Gideon asked.

Some days, leaving the FBI was all Spencer could think about. He imagined a life where he could wake up every morning and spend the day staring at something besides pictures of murder victims. Maybe he could get a job teaching, buy a little house, do whatever normal people did.

But Spencer was not, by nature, a self-deluding man. He knew that no matter how far he got from the FBI, he'd drop everything to head back when the BAU called.

Maybe that was what kept Spencer where he was. He knew he couldn't live without the BAU, and he didn't want to know if the BAU could thrive without him.

After all, Gideon had left them behind, and they had managed.

Spencer had managed.

The speaker on the wall buzzed. Spencer almost let it ring out, but it was likely Derek, and Derek had a key to the front door. Feeling far older than his thirty years, Spencer pushed himself to his feet and crossed the room. With a quick depression of the button on the speaker, he said, "Hello?"

"Hey, it's me," came the familiar voice.

"I'm not ready yet," Spencer said.

"I'll come up."

Knowing when it was futile to fight the inevitable, Spencer pressed the button on the intercom to open the building's front door, then let the speaker fall silent.

"Spencer."

"Are you coming with us?" Spencer asked, turning back to Gideon.

"Why would I go with you?"

Spencer wanted to laugh, but Gideon was being serious. With a sudden burst of energy, Spencer stalked across the room to grab a newspaper clipping from the top of the bookshelf. "Because of this!" Spencer brandished the paper in the direction of a remarkably unconcerned Gideon. "Because four days ago, a black mid-size sedan cornered badly on a dark country road and overcompensated into a tree at sixty miles an hour. Single fatality, when the male driver went through the windshield on impact--"

"Spencer."

"I mean, I thought it would be better like this, just an accident," Spencer went on, words tripping over each other in his haste to get out his bottled-up grief and confusion and anger. "Better than being shot by an unsub, right?"

"Those who live by the sword," Gideon quipped, but he sobered before Spencer's anger could focus. "There's no one to blame here, Spencer, not convenient villain or madman. Nothing but a moment's inattention on an unfamiliar road."

Spencer raked his hand through his hair. "Why do you always have to have all the answers?" he demanded.

Gideon shrugged. "I don't have all the answers, just the answer to this." He was unperturbed by Spencer's emotion, even now. "It was just an accident. It happens."

"Not to us!"

And that was the crux of it. Mundane things like accidental death didn't befall the members of the BAU, past or present. They were shot and they were stabbed and the very monsters they hunted lurked in the shadows, bringing home to them violent death.

Members of the BAU didn't just die in car crashes. It left things... unfinished.

The sharp knock at the door stopped Spencer from toppling over into a total breakdown. He had to answer the door, because it was Derek Morgan, who had a key and an overdeveloped sense of protection when it came to Spencer Reid.

Spencer opened the door on a worried-looking man. "You okay, kid?" were the first words out of Derek's mouth.

"What do you think?" Spencer asked.

Derek raised an eyebrow. "I think you were yelling pretty loud as I was coming down the hall."

Great.

"I was on the phone," Spencer lied, going back into the apartment. Derek followed him inside, closing the door carefully behind him.

"You ready to go?" Derek asked, his gaze moving carefully over the apartment, taking in everything and seeing nothing.

Spencer stared at Gideon, standing in the middle of the apartment taking up no space at all. "No," Spencer answered truthfully. "Let me get my tie."

As Spencer went to retrieve the long-untouched object from his closet, Derek picked up the rumpled newspaper article from the counter. He stared at it for a long minute. "How are you holding up?" he asked.

"About as well as can be expected." Spencer settled the tie around his neck with jerky fingers, tying the knot deftly. Muscle memory was a strange thing indeed.

"Reid, it's okay if you're--"

"If I'm what?" Spencer asked, not looking at Derek or at the silent, unmoving Gideon. "He was important to all of us."

"He was your mentor--"

"Derek--"

"And you never got a chance to say goodbye," Derek finished. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his expensive suit, something he rarely did, and it made Spencer _think_ for a minute. A man's death rarely effected only one person. "That can't be easy."

It wasn't easy, and Derek knew that. The fact of the matter was Gideon had been gone a very long time. He hadn't been there when Spencer struggled with overcoming his drug addiction, hadn't been there when Spencer had been forced by faulty memory to track down his father. He hadn't even sent a note after Spencer was shot. Could it really have been as simple as that he hadn't known Spencer was in trouble?

Now, there was no one left to ask.

The silence hung there until it became a painful thing. And because a grieving Derek was a mother-hen Derek, and because Jason Gideon kept staring at Spencer with all the patience of the dead, Spencer gave them both what they wanted. "I miss him, okay?" Spencer said. "I've missed him since he left. But just because Gideon's car swerved off the road into a tree and he died, doesn't mean he's any farther away to miss."

Derek, misunderstanding as Spencer knew he would, pulled Spencer into a brief hug, which Spencer allowed because it didn't mean much to him and would mean everything to Derek. This was what Derek did after someone died: took control of the scene, managed everyone, shouldered the burden of grief.

Some things come to people in childhood and never leave. Derek lost his father to a robber's bullet. Spencer's father walked out. Nothing would change the facts that had pushed them both into adulthood too soon.

Derek slapped Spencer on the back a few times. "Come on, we should go. Time to say goodbye."

Spencer glanced at the shade of Jason Gideon, and he finally _understood_ why Gideon wrote him that letter of explanation so many years ago, set his pain to paper one last time before he walked away from the BAU, from Spencer, from everything. Gideon had wanted to say goodbye to Spencer.

Now, it was Spencer's turn.

He let his eyes close briefly, then allowed Derek to pull him from the apartment. They paused in the hallway while Spencer fit his key into the deadbolt and prepared to close the door. One quick look back told him that Gideon was still there, still watching, and that in spite of everything, Jason Gideon was smiling.

Spencer closed the door and turned the key in the lock. Gideon wouldn't be there when Spencer returned from the man's funeral.

The dead never stayed for long.

 

  
_the end_   



End file.
